CDR: Re: Germans to tax PCs for Lars

[Bill Stewart]

At 06:15 AM 9/7/00 -0400, Tom Vogt wrote:
>Tim May wrote:
>> You're missing a more important point: there is no correlation
>> between who is using the service or product and who is paying the tax.
>> 
>> Taxing a computer used for video game playing, for example, when
>> absolutely no "piracy" is happening from that computer. An overly
>> wide net.
>> 
>> Governments like this sort of thing, however. Tax everyone, then
>> spend the revenues as they wish.
>
>not quite right. it is NOT the government that collects, and this is not
>a tax. there's a "non-profit" organisation called GEMA that collects and
>re-distributes these things.
>
>the system has been the subject of criticism often, but works
>surprisingly well. that might be because the article doesn't mention the
>OTHER side of it. for example, paying a fixed sum to GEMA enables you to
>play music in public (say, as a shop owner in your shop) without having
>to deal with the individual artists and labels for "broadcasting
>rights". it greatly simplifies things for small shops.

So does the proposed law require companies to pay GEMA
if they make or sell anything in this category?
If they don't pay, what happens?  Lawsuit?  Criminal prosecution?
I don't expect that US newspaper reporting gets the details precisely correct.

In the US, there are a couple of organizations, I think ASCAP and BMI,
	(American Society of Composers, Artists, and Performers)
that manage the intellectual property rights for most musicians.
If you play music on the radio or do other public performances,
you have to pay them their standard rates.  It's not mandatory -
there are non-ASCAP musicians, and radio stations (particularly
religious talk/music stations) that don't participate,
but if you play music from their members on the radio without
a license from them, they'll sue for copyright infringement.

(The main reason religious radio stations often don't use ASCAP
is that they're a niche market, but the payments to ASCAP
cover the whole market and are priced high enough that 
stations that don't play new commercial music
don't want to pay that much.  Of course, some of them just
don't like sex, drugs, and rock&roll :-)
				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart at pobox.com
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